Archive for May, 2015

I’ve said before that raising the minimum wage in order to provide the “poor” with the material standard of living they feel entitled to is a plan that will backfire, causing incalculable financial harm to the very people it’s meant to provide for.

McDonald’s New Kiosk Model
(Click to Enlarge)

Well, it appears that, if you’re one of those who’ve been screaming to make $15 / hr to flip burgers, your future is now. McDonald’s is piloting a new, cashier-free kiosk system in several major US cities after having great success with them in Europe. And this is just McDonald’s; others are moving this way as well.

What is as telling as it is interesting is that, despite the hype, that these kiosks were developed to reduce labor costs, they weren’t. They were developed in order to speed up the ordering process and overall improve the customer experience…because the workers, who now want more money, couldn’t or wouldn’t do job as well as a self-service kiosk.

And the above are just about the cashiers. Other automated systems are in development or early pilot to completely automate the fast food cooking process. Hence, soon there may be very few people employed in the fast food industry at all.

Yes, to all those who’ve pushed, and pushed, and putsched to jack up the minimum wage I say, your future is now and it is bleak.

Like this:

A brief word of warning – While the song in question is couched in the normal Christian monotheism of America, my commentary is in the framework of my faith, which is generally described as Pagan. If that’s going to be a larger issue for you than the actual meat of the commentary, there’s this thing called the Back Button. 😉

The Gods Made Girls

Not only is RaeLynn aka Racheal Lynn Woodward delectably cute and a fine singer, she’s got the right of things in “God Made Girls.” The Gods made women to complete men and men to complete women.

Maiden, Warrior, Mother, or Crone – whichever Aspect they currently evoke, the Gods made women to make men better than they’d otherwise be. That’s the crux of it that underlies any and all expressions of gender roles in the world.

Like this:

There will always be issues, often severe ones, when anything is used in a manner that was never intended to be used in.

Fast Food Was Never Intended To Sustain Someone Indefinitely

Fast food is perfect example and one that is very timely at this moment in history. It was never intended to be mainstay of anyone’s diet and its misuse as such is the reason behind the Liberals’ and Progressives’ complaints about obesity, food deserts, and other such things. Similarly, fast food jobs were never intended to sustain a person economically for any great length of time and their misuse is at the heart of the Liberals’ and Progressives’ assault to increase the minimum wage.

Truly though, the issue of minimum wage and its use and misuse has two disparate vectors, a legitimate issue and an illegitimate construction.

A Legitimate Issue

To be fair, under the influence of Obamanomics the demographics of who’s working in the fast food industry or otherwise earning only minimum has changed greatly since 2008. There are more and more men and women, previously well-employed, now being forced by circumstance to attempt to support themselves and often their families through minimum wage jobs.

An Illegitimate Construction

Irrespective of just who is now working for minimum wage, a huge underlying problem with it now is the Liberals’ and Progressives’ construction that minimum wage should be a wage upon which someone can live well. This in turn reflects their beliefs that the poor are somehow more downtrodden than is rationally acceptable. They truly seem to believe that the poor should have a standard of living that is similar to that which is enjoyed by the more productive and successful.

~*~

Also remember that this misuse, if allowed to continue and expand, will just make things worse. It will both reduce the number of minimum wage jobs available as employers adapt and raise the prices of many basic products and services, thereby destroying the increase in workers’ buying power that increasing the minimum wage is intended to accomplish.